Bay Area students, faculty and organizers revving up for a series of protests and rallies next week over fee increases and cutbacks to public education condemned the destruction and violence at UC Berkeley late Thursday by demonstrators promoting the March 4th events.

What started as a nighttime, open-air dance party in Upper Sproul Plaza with up to 200 people quickly soured into a riot as protesters vandalized a vacant university building and then lit trash cans on fire and clashed with police on Telegraph Avenue.

Two people have been taken into custody in connection with the riot. More arrests are possible, police said.

"This casts a shadow on the majority of our students who are working constructively toward budget justice," said Phil Klasky, an ethnic studies professor at San Francisco State University who is helping organize a March 4 picket and rally. "We do not condone violence in any form."

Klasky said frustration is understandable given the increased fees combined with the unavailability of courses for students - but not violence.

The clash began at 11:30 p.m. Thursday, when police responding to complaints of loud music found dozens of people dancing and drinking in Upper Sproul, with about 30 individuals surrounding nearby Durant Hall.

Another 10 or so people had cut the locks of the south gates of a fence surrounding the hall, and were inside the building dancing as they left a trail of graffiti and broken windows, said UC Berkeley spokeswoman Janet Gilmore.

Some in the group strung up a banner reading "March 4th" on the outside wall, a reference to Thursday's national Day of Action. In the yard out front, others overturned portable toilets and tossed construction equipment, Gilmore said.

Police can't get in

University police officers called to the scene were prevented by protesters from entering the building, but made no arrests as they waited for more officers to arrive, she said.

Before the other officers arrived, the crowd, including those in the building, moved south to Telegraph Avenue to chant protest slogans and dance in the street.

At around 1:30 a.m., arguments turned tense between the protesters and Berkeley police who were monitoring the gathering, and within 20 minutes some in the crowd lit a Dumpster trash receptacle on fire and shoved it toward officers, police said.

That's when a full-out riot erupted. As officers pushed the crowd back so firefighters could get at the flaming garbage bin, protesters flung bottles and rocks at police, authorities said.

A half-dozen local police agencies were called in to help contain the crowd, including the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and the California Highway Patrol.

"The crowd got out of control," said Berkeley police spokesman Officer Andrew Frankel.

Two arrests

The protest was finally quelled by 3:06 a.m., leaving debris and still-flaming trash cans all over Telegraph Avenue near the university's entrance, officers said.

Cal student Marika Goodrich, 28, and former student Zachary Miller, 26, were arrested and booked into Berkeley City Jail on suspicion of inciting a riot and resisting arrest. Goodrich, held on $32,500 bail, was also booked for allegedly assaulting a police officer, and Miller, held on $22,500 bail, was booked on suspicion of obstructing a police officer.

Nobody was seriously hurt, officials said.

The takeover of Durant Hall was the first planned building occupation since last semester, when students seized campus buildings at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University. Students said they seized the hall - a shuttered library being turned into an administration building - because it symbolizes wasteful spending.

Renovation crews who have been working on Durant arrived Friday to find makeshift barricades of lumber and debris left by protesters inside the chain-link fence, and graffiti reading "I'm pissed off," and "This is our university," said Joe Salow, supervisor for West Coast Construction, the general contractor for the renovation project.

"Such action does incredible damage to our advocacy efforts with Sacramento and with the California public to preserve public higher education," Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said in a statement Friday.

Damage on Telegraph

Noah's Bagels manager Gina Tooley said a trash can in front of her store at Telegraph and Durant avenues was still on fire when she got to work at 5 a.m. "I was scared," she said. "I thought someone had robbed the store."

The store that appeared to suffer the worst damage was Subway at Telegraph and Bancroft Way, where several windows and glass doors were broken.

First-year student Andrew Albright walked through Sproul Plaza Friday morning, where there was no visible evidence left of the night's events, but he had heard about the damage.

"It's ridiculous," he said. "I think it's not a conducive way to state your opinion."